Behind the Scenes With Director Everardo Gout | MARS

Presented by Acura. Precision crafted performance. Retro Rockets are about to fire in 1, 2, 3!

Hello, my name is Ardo Good, and I'm the director of the miniseries. I was drawn to this project mainly because of two things. One is that I always try to look every day into the sky so that you can take your place and try to figure out what is not important in your life.

When Ron Howard called me and asked if I wanted to direct the series, he explained to me that it was going to be with Nat Geo, and all of these science elements were going to be involved. NASA was involved, and SpaceX was involved. It just got me excited because I wanted to pay my homage to Nao, to the magazine that made me discover the world.

So it all makes sense that now that NA is pushing into doing more drama, I would embrace that and help them create a format that is driven by drama. Vitaline, I'm not getting any, is also science factored so that we understand that what's going on is not in the future, is not science fiction, but the Mars mission starts today; it is happening right now.

The core of the show is based on reality, which means that there is no one space agency in the world that can achieve the ordeal of going to Mars. So NASA alone cannot do it; they have to come together with Roscosmos and with Jackson. And it's happening now as we speak.

So it was only organic that we would cast outside of the box. We had internationality all over it—on the core, on the idea, on the cast, and on the crew. I was speaking French with my ab, then Spanish with my doop, and then English with my U producer. So it only reflects the reality of the mission and of what we want to achieve with the show.

To me, the philosophical challenges or what intrigue me are: are we allowed to colonize? Do we deserve a second chance? Are we so special—our arrogant species—or is it in our DNA to go there, and it's our right to strive for life?

All of those conflicts are what's really interesting me looking forward into this series. And hopefully that blend of love and intelligence can permit and bring audiences closer to the wonders of who we are and why we are on this planet.